Sunday, May 4, 2014

The Sami people believe in Shamanism. Shamanism is thought that one can reach an ultimate level of consciousness in a sense. A high level of spirit connection. A shaman is a person is regarded to having access to the spirit world.
There are three important aspects of shamanism, animism, shamanism and polytheism. Animism is the belief that anything significant in value had or has a soul. Polytheistic people believe that there are multiple spirits that are coming into contact with at the same time.

Gakti, the universal Sami clothing in a sense, is Virtually used for everything even herding reindeer. Traditionally it was made from reindeer, but as the years went on they discovered that wool cotton or silk was stronger, more comfortable, and better material all together so they stuck with that. Its basically a big dress, men and women wear it alike and they wear boots made out of reindeer. The patterns and colors that go on the dress indicate where the person came from, if they aremarried, or sometimes what family they come from. The edges such as the sleeves and collars and such have appliqués in the form of geometric shapes.

Reindeer is one of the biggest aspects of life in the Sami culture. Its what gives them life, its what they eat. around the time of force assimilation, the places where the reindeer survived is where the few Sami people survived. In Norway and Sweden, Reindeer husbandry is protected by the law, one must be of Sami descent and some how associated with them to be able to hunt and make any sort of profit from selling them. If not then by law you can be arrested for essentially stealing.

Sami people sing what they call yoik/joik. They are more like chants instead of songs and is sung a Capella(no instruments or noticeable pattern it is sung to). They sing super slow and try and muster up the music from the depths of their throats making it as deep as possible. these a Capella songs can be dedicated to anything and anyone there is no set reason or tradition as to why they do this. Whatever they feel like dedicating the song to is what they do. They have strayed away, a bit, sometimes being accompanied by the Sami instrument the "fadno" which is like a flute and also hand percussion.

Not much is known, from my research, to show that the Sami people have a huge connection with birds and if there is one main one that they really go to for any religious purpose, but in fact they use birds in compassion to humans to somehow match them up with a partner. in their art as well birds seem to be a common link in Sami art